A senior Hamas official told AFP that the United States under Donald Trump, who won in the US presidential election, must end its “blind support” for Israel in the offensive in Gaza.

Israel’s military issued new evacuation orders in the north of the Gaza Strip yesterday after carrying out strikes across the enclave which Palestinian media and medics said had killed at least 35 people.

The Israeli military said yesterday it had killed a top Hezbollah commander it accused of overseeing rocket and anti-tank missile attacks against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.

At least 31 people were killed during Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip yesterday, Palestinian medics said, with nearly half of the deaths in northern areas where the army has waged a month-long campaign it says aims to prevent Hamas regrouping.

Iranian demonstrators yesterday gathered outside the former US embassy in Tehran to mark the anniversary of the 1979 hostage crisis that has for decades shaped relations between Washington and Tehran.

Israel yesterday again carried out deadly air strikes on north Gaza, where the UN calls conditions “apocalyptic”, as Lebanon’s Hezbollah intensified rocket fire near Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv, on Israel’s second front.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said yesterday that the United States and Israel will “undoubtedly receive a crushing response” for what they do against his country, state media reported.

In the Christian town of Deir al-Ahmar, Hassan Noun has pitched his tent in a church courtyard after fleeing Israeli air strikes in the eastern Lebanese region of Baalbek.

Lebanon's health ministry said 52 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on Friday in the country's east, attacks for which the Israeli army had not issued evacuation warnings

"Should Iran, its partners, or its proxies use this moment to target American personnel or interests in the region, the United States will take every measure necessary to defend our people," Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said in a statement

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 people, mostly civilians, were killed in strikes on Syria’s Qusayr region bordering Lebanon, where Israel said it hit Hezbollah weapons depots.

Prospects of a ceasefire between Israel and its foe Hamas ran aground yesterday as Israeli airstrikes killed at least 64 people, most of them women and children, in the Gaza Strip, according to medics in the Palestinian enclave.

Israel pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs with a series of powerful airstrikes early yesterday morning after issuing evacuation orders to residents, in the first such strikes in days targeting the dense urban area, Reuters witnesses said.

A senior Hamas official said yesterday that the group rejects any proposal for a temporary halt to more than a year of fighting in Gaza and insists on a lasting ceasefire.

Iran said yesterday that its production of missiles remained intact, following Israeli air strikes targeting military facilities last week.

Lebanon's health ministry said at least 60 people were killed on Monday in Israeli raids on several areas in the eastern Bekaa Valley, most of them in the Baalbek region

Israel bombarded Hezbollah and Hamas targets in Lebanon and Gaza yesterday, with no respite in the conflict one day after its strikes on Iran raised fears of a broader war.

The Israeli military has warned Tehran against responding

With the US presidential election heading into the home stretch, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will likely be hoping for Donald Trump to return to the White House

Iran warned yesterday it would defend itself after Israeli air strikes on military targets killed at least two soldiers and further stoked fears of a full-scale regional war in the Middle East.